Free Dying to Live by Roxy De Winter Page A

personnel and it’s all kept on a strictly ‘need to know’ basis. I myself don’t know the location of half of the zones within this compound.”
    Lucy realised that she was drifting slightly off course. She knew what she was meant to be telling them, but this information was useful to them none the less.
    “I came into work this morning after a week off visiting my sister...” Lucy gulped. “Oh, God. My sister, do you think she’s okay?”
    “Lucy, with all due respect, we can’t really afford to think about things like that just yet. We need to establish what’s going on,”
    Xin tried to gently set her back on track.
    “You said that you came into work this morning? But the security failures had already happened, so it must have already progressed quite drastically by the time you got here?”
    “Well, the gates were open,” Lucy said. “The gates are never open. I poked my head round into here and it was exactly like this.” She gestured around them. “My workspace is in this hangar here...” Lucy circled a larger rectangle, a fair way up the map from the circle signifying the cabin. “I’m an engineer. I don’t do anything secret or amazing here. I just work on any mechanical gear that needs fixing, like vehicles, generators and quite often the key card scanners.”
    With this revelation, even Frank looked up from the padlock he was working on. The fragile, young woman with porcelain skin, such dainty features, a slender waist and delicate little hands, did a more masculine job than any of the men in the room.
    “I know, I know, not what you expected. I’m full of surprises.” Lucy rolled her eyes.
    “You’re not... uh... I mean are you... a lesbian?” Frank asked innocently. “I mean, not that it matters if you are... It’s just...”
    “Frank!” Xin spluttered. “That is so... politically incorrect. You can’t just assume...”
    “It’s fine. I get this a lot; even my parents had the talk with me when I first applied for an engineering course.” Lucy sighed with exasperation. “No, I’m not gay. I just don’t subscribe to gender stereotypes, and while I’m willing to accept that you didn’t intend to offend me, I’d appreciate if you could try a more open minded approach towards gender roles in future.”
    Suitably chastised, Frank turned his attention back to the lock and tried to disguise a smirk. Internally he was fist pumping in victory, at the presence of such an intriguing and pretty, young, heterosexual female.
    “Anyway, like I said. I got here and the gates were open. This place was empty but still, I headed for the hangar. It felt kind of strange but didn’t seem that scary. It was just empty and quiet.” Lucy shut her eyes and paused for a second. Then she turned and drew another circle around a square building, not far away from the building she had circled as the hangar she worked in. “I got to this building, here. It’s one of the food halls and I call in for breakfast some mornings. I didn’t go in today though. I could hear the screams from outside.”
    “Wait,” Bao frowned, standing up and walking over to the map. He pointed at the food hall and trailed a finger down the map. There wasn’t much beyond the circled building, just the one long track down to the cabin. “This is right on the edge of the base, correct? How did it spread so far? Lucy, could you hazard a guess as to where they may carry out any work with extra-terrestrials or disease research?”
    Lucy puzzled for a moment. “I don’t know of any extra-terrestrial work going on here. No doubt it was, but I couldn’t guess where. All the biological labs are up this way though.” Lucy drew a big circle around ten big buildings towards the top right hand side of the map. Far away from the circles she had already drawn.
    “It makes no sense!” Bao pounded the wall in frustration as he spoke. “The military came. They found that some of the... infected, had already escaped when they got